


I go, and it is done; the bell invites me (for it is always his voice that summons thee to heaven or to hell.)

by Whitmanesque



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: AU, M/M, he be k N E W, horatio five seconds after hamlet dies like, oh bitch I'm going amongst the shades to be w/ my husband, shakespeare knew his greek myths, song of achilles, the intertextuality between the two h e h
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 05:32:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18614149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whitmanesque/pseuds/Whitmanesque
Summary: Three weeks had passed since they’d found him on the floor.(An AU inspired by The Song of Achilles)





	I go, and it is done; the bell invites me (for it is always his voice that summons thee to heaven or to hell.)

**Author's Note:**

> “I am made of memories.” --Madeline Miller.

 

Three weeks had passed since they’d found him on the floor.

Since they’d taken his body, a shell of armor huddled around Hamlet. Since he’d ran back, insisting, he is mine, _my_ _lord_ , do not-- get your hands off of him. For he was a prince worth all this kingdom and the next. Please, _please_ … Since he’d slept with the corpse in his bed and then one morning, at the gentle probing of Fortinbras, had placed the urn in his bedroom.

Their bedroom, rather, he thought, dwelling in the weeks before the dual had occurred. The suitcases that had sat in the corner. The hushed whispers that passed between them in desperate, remorse-coloured breaths; we’ll be fine, these next few days for your father’s funeral will pass and we’ll escape. We’ll go back to Wittenberg and read all the books in the library ten times over, I swear it. The promise of return to a paradise that never was.

The memories rose, black as bile, stinging dagger-sharp. Hamlet in his arms, trembling, terrified, hiding from everyone else but him. His mouth progressively tasting of soil and soot with each passing disparity of a kiss.  He had turned into a ghost before his very eyes; exhausted and half-dead by the first hour they’d been there.

To sleep, he thought countless times over since he was dragged away, perchance to dream of him again …

How he had wretched. Wailed and raged until he thought nothing could be left of him, disappointed when there somehow was. Now he was little more than severed twig, a snapped string in a harp that could no longer command music. He was Without.

“Horatio?” The voice inquired, opening the door halfway so as to give him privacy if need be.

Horatio pulled the thick, navy-blue comforter over his body. He was bundled in Hamlet’s clothes, all black, draped around him as a makeshift shroud. Not that he saw it that way. No, for he had stopped living the moment that blade struck. This was a comfort, the scent of tangerines and sunlight, old books and licorice, the last of a boy he’d watch crumble to dust in his embrace.

Enough, he thought. Go--go away. Not you, you’re halfway decent.

“We, um, I’m sorry,” Fortinbras murmured. “We need to make plans. And I appreciate you helping but I--tomorrow we need to get to work.”

Horatio sighed. Without sticking his head from under the covers, he spoke. “Just give me the night.”

With that, the door closed listless as a coffin hinge.

 

***

Morning comes and Horatio knows why Hamlet always dreaded the sun so much.

Practically hissed at it, he remembered, not bothering to change out of his clothes from the day prior. He reached for his glasses and saw them there, together; Hamlet sprawled out beneath him, a tangle of limbs intertwined, all silk and almond skin, his hands uncurled like orchid petals, resting still on Horatio’s face, head soundly on his chest.

Hamlet, he nearly whispered, hand reaching out automatically. He was hungry and frail, a sleep-walker wrought with the pain of anamnesis, longing for their past life.

No. Stop that.

He shook his head, clenching his glasses hard enough to break them.

When he eventually went downstairs, mind thick with a myriad of intangible visions, there was the usual buffet of food spread out. A table that dripped with danishes and poached eggs. He walked past all of it, unseeing, and slumped against a chair.

“Yes?” He asked Fortinbras.

“I’d bid you good morning, but I’m afraid you’ll bite my head off,” he replied, a cup of black coffee in his hands.

“Alright, let’s have it.”

Fortinbras began to explain what was occurring outside the recent family tragedy; new ruler, new war, France would soon be upon them. Sure, it wasn’t the biggest battle, but it meant the honor of Denmark and a promise that the new regime wouldn’t end way the old one had. They didn’t have much time and would have to make do. He flattered Horatio, really, asking him about analytics. I’m an English major, a philosopher. Not even, he quipped, I never got to finish the degree …

Fortinbras brushed it off with a knowing, compassionate glance.

“If there’s anything else I can do …” He began, changing the subject to more personal matters, but Horatio held up a hand. No, he wanted to say, you’ve done enough, not executing me, treating me like his grieving widow instead of a mere nuisance these past weeks. For that I’m ever indebted. For that I will try and help you, despite being beyond help myself.

He bid Fortinbras goodnight.

“Don’t you mean good morning?”

“I--It was a joke we had,” he said, feeling his throat close to a pinhead. The smallest of notions overwhelmed him, flowing with vivid recollection. “I’m hardly awake unless its night, really. I promise, I’ll start looking at maps and working on strategy soon. Thank you.”

Fortinbras gave him a worried nod as he walked away. He waifed up the steps, fog-like and unfeeling, then promptly fell back into bed.

That would have been all well and good, but of course, the nightmares followed. They always did. The past few weeks had been nothing short of a continuous one, waking or not.

He lie in bed, head brim-full with phantasms slashed by a lance; my lord, my sweet prince, the words ripped from his throat, his body in his arms, cradled as he struggled to exhale. His hand had reached out for Horatio, tilting him down, their foreheads touching as he ceased, gasping into silence.

My lord, he had wept, voice indistinguishable from a shriek.Dido’s lament. My lord, _please_. Hamlet, do not leave me, do not expect me to bear this without you.

He eyed the poison for days after. Had slept with it in his room. The one thing that stopped him each time he held the cup to his lips, a prickle of it reaching his throat, were Hamlet’s words.

No, he had begged, you mustn’t. I won’t allow you to.

Each time he had tried he felt some unseen force yank the cup from him. One that left him heaving over a basin, falling down into a lifeless heap, hoping to never wake.  

That wasn’t the worse, though. If anything, that was favourable. Hallucinations were tempting as ambrosia; Hamlet reciting lines in the back of Wittenberg’s library. Hamlet, boundless and enthusiastic, staging productions for the University. Hamlet wild, rebellious, and then suddenly so shy when he leaned his head against Horatio’s shoulder, untroubled and young in his sleep.

And oh, the way he touched you, he remembered. Without having to try he could recall those long fingers and smooth, hungry lips which were never quenched, always wanting more, always heady and sweet as wine.

The memories only grew stronger from there. It seemed everything lived inside of him, a garden tended over and blossoming for one purpose alone; Hamlet as a shadow, radiant light in his eyes as they sat perched, watching the sunset from the Universities roof. Hamlet licking pomegranate juice off the pad of his thumb, eyelashes fluttering coquettishly. Hamlet weaving flowers and crowning them, not princes, but bards, as they laughed, half-drunk on words and each others witty remarks.

The curve of his shoulder when he danced. The playful edge to his voice when he recited verse. The indelible shape of his palms against his neck.

Hamlet and Hamlet and Hamlet, he had thought countless times. That was all there was. As many Hamlet’s as there were chambers of his heart.

He woke, startled and parched. Dragging his body, a slight limp, he retrieved a glass of water from the bathroom. Moonlight spilled cold and distant through the window. He put the glass to his lips, managed a few good sips without gagging and then returned. He walked to the bed, could almost imagine Hamlet’s arms around him, almost feel the way their bodies would slot together; stitches in a woven row, pages in a perfectly bound book, twin stars connected by constellation beams, always finding the other through the dark.

But then he stopped. He hadn’t meant to. One moment he was walking, the next he was in a near faint.

Lying across the bed, a pair of eyes greeted him. He would know them even if he were blinded by Medusa herself.

“My lord,” he reeled, all but crashing into him, an apparition, a flame, a white moth begging him to believe, only if for the night …

“Well, it took awhile,” he began. His voice, though distant, was instantly recognizable. “The world of spirits is trickier than I initially thought.”

Oh, _oh_ that is my prince, absurd and self-assured. He almost kissed him then and there had he not needed the explanation that followed.

Hamlet held out a hand, flimsy, half-solid. “I--there’s not much time.”

“What, _why?_ ”

“Fortinbras, he--I know what’s going on. I can help. I think, in part, that’s why I’m still here.”

Horatio didn’t find any of this odd. He gathered his gossamer form to him. He couldn’t do anything more but sob broken, hideous cries into his shoulder, wetly kissing his way up his collarbone, his chest, the jagged, silver scar over his neck. His cheeks, _his lips,_ dear gods, he thought, crushing their lips together. All but ravaging him, he melted at every slide of their bodies, warm and right.

“And … and the other part?” He asked finally, panting against his mouth.

A little in awe, he observed the bruised nature of Hamlet’s lips. You gorgeous bastard, he wanted to say, before correcting himself the slightest bit.

 _My_ gorgeous bastard.

He fought the urge to smile. Not yet, he feared, for he wouldn’t let himself be tricked. Not like this.  

Hamlet didn’t talk, didn’t answer his question the way he thought. Instead, he clasped both of Horatio’s hands, placing them over his own. Slowly, he worked his way down Horatio’s body, ribs and arms and gaunt cheeks flooded with colour for the first time in what felt like an eon.

This, he seemed to mean. His hands roved, tender and surreal, all too familiar as they grazed bruised, unbelieving skin. This and this and this …

Only measured in shallow breaths and sighs, time passed wordlessly. He caressed Horatio’s face, holding him as though he were the pieces of a shattered urn that could be reconfigured, made whole once more if he just pressed hard enough.

“And how do you think … ” he whispered, the words caught between his teeth, severe and ragged.

Horatio collapsed against him, knew he’d made it all up if not for the way he drew out the vowels in the next phrase he spoke. The distinct accent he had heard countless times when Hamlet was sleep-addled and restless.

“ … How do think I could ever leave _this_ behind?”

 

***

After that, Elsinore was different. The chair at the head of the table wasn’t empty anymore. Not to Horatio. He told Fortinbras what had happened, and bless the man, he simply asked what they should do from there. They became a queer holy trinity of sorts, bound to a war none of them particularly wanted to win, but knew they must all the same.

They planned.

Fortinbras excelled at battle position. Hamlet, as always, was simply brilliant in his knack for strategy. And Horatio made coffee, doing some revision when needed.

They worked incessantly. There was always lots to be done. Lines drawn over and over on a map twirled in front of Horatio’s vision until he could barely see. There was no anticipation left. The war was over before it had begun. They were determined that Denmark wouldn’t lose this. Denmark would never lose anything again. The curse that had been placed upon it would be broken once and for all.

Fortinbras would bid them both farewell for the evening, a nod over Horatio’s shoulder to someone he couldn’t quite see, and then left them to their solitude.

In the night, he molded their bodies together, kissing each wound on his translucent skin. His lips pulsed hot and needy over one in particular, its barbed grasp on his jugular. He nearly punctured the opening trying to drink from it, draining the very poison with his teeth, as if to say please come back, come back to me.

Dear scholar, Hamlet teased, breath tickling against the shell of his ear, is this what happens to the logical sort when you leave them for too long?

But Horatio didn’t laugh, couldn’t laugh. Instead, he pressed Hamlet down, wrapping his legs around his waist, holding his hands above his head. A surrender in which both side were begging the other to win. A strange, bitter passion played out in perfect tandem.

“Prithee … ” he began, but there were no other words to come. Prithee, you must stay, don’t ever leave again. Take me with you. Wherever ghosts go, I belong there. I belong with you.

But there were no answers, only Hamlet’s lips soft and pliant between his, taking everything he gave with a serene, intimate beauty.  

In between retracing bodies and retaining strategy, they did what they had always done; read.

It’s not so different, Horatio thought, not really. Except for the times when Hamlet flickered, would say he feels something fading within him, doesn’t know how much control he has over this. That’s when Horatio worried. Not that he ever really stopped worrying persay, but when the feeling came back, sharp and sickly, he drowned in it.

One night, Hamlet looked up from the book in his hand, mouth twisted pensively.

“What is it, my lord?” Horatio asked. His hand on his arm, he was seldom able to go more than three feet away for the paralyzing fear that he might disappear.

“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret,” he recited, in a clear, alluring tone. “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

_The Little Prince. How fitting._

“Are we reciting fairytales tonight?” My sweet prince, are we going to pretend nothing bad can harm us? How I loved our games of pretend. How I long for when we thought we were young gods, kept by a few years of study, never thinking war would fall so soon. When we dreamed we could be free.

“Aren’t we always. Aren’t all myths just fairytales, too?”

“I think that depends on how they end.”

His hand brushed over Horatio’s hair, minute and reposeful, knowing of each strand of hair on his head by touch alone.

how did I ever go a second without this, he wondered. What was my life before you, what could it ever be _but_ you?

“I’ve never met a hero who was happy,” he whispered, placing a kiss to his temple.

"Why does Tragedy exist?”

“Because I’m full of rage.”

“Why are you full of rage?”

“Because _you_ are full of grief,” he answered seriously, catching Horatio’s glance, holding it as though they never parted a day. “And well, I guess I’m not much a hero.”

“You--you are many things to me, and all of them true,” Horatio replied, turning his head, not able to withstand the way his pulsed raced.

It is a mysterious place, he thought, as hot, salty drops spilled on his cheeks, this land of tears.

“Truly?”

“Yes, but … but they don’t help us. Not now.”

Hamlet paused, thinking for a moment.

“If there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their loves,”  he said, and Horatio felt the hairline fracture of a smile on his lips. He pushed it down.

They would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonour, and emulating one another in honour,” he finished, easy as anything they’d spent countless hours studying in University.

Ah, merciless Love, is there any length to which you cannot force the human heart to go?”

“How does distance look? It is a simple direct question it expands from a spaceless within to the edge of what can be loved.”

“It depends on light.”

“Love that excuses no one loved from loving.”

“Love lead us straight to sudden death together.”

The words rolled easily between them, like juggling household objects with a partner of many years.

“Doubt the stars are fire, doubt the sun doth move … ”

“The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch which hurts and is desired.”

“ ...But we carry the weight wearily, and so must rest in the arms of love at last, must rest in the arms of love.”

“The love and the laughter come from the same place: but not many people go there.”

His hands found their way to Horatio’s, delicate and innate in the way they moved. “Come, sir, come, I'll wrestle with you in my strength of love. Look, here I have you … ”

“Here at last is a true lover, Night after night have I sung of him, though I knew him not: night after night have I told his story to the stars, and now I see him.”

“What I sing of, he suffers—what is joy to me, to him is pain. Surely Love is a wonderful thing. It is more precious than emeralds, and dearer than fine opals.”

“And I used to imagine that we were two happy children free to wander in a Paradise of sadness.”

“I am small. I love him because he has a song. When he turned around to die I see the teeth he sang through.”

“His singing was soft. His singing is of the place where a woman takes flowers off their leaves and puts them in a round basket before the clouds.”

This, he thought, this and this and this, too, was the way they knew each other.

“That kind of Love, that exempts no one beloved from loving, seized me with pleasure of this man so strongly, that, as thou seest, it doth not yet desert me.”

“I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for their religion--I have shuddered at it, I shudder no more.”

“I could be martyr for my religion. Love is my religion.”

I could die for that, he thought, I could die for you. I feel as though I could eat the world raw when I look at you.

Hamlet turned. At the same time, they nearly burst out laughing. Terrible, sadistic, minds working in co-morbidity.

“I know a way to win,” he said, giving his hand a firm squeeze.

Horatio nodded. He knew they weren’t talking about wars now. At least, not that type.

“Oh my lord, I know it, too.”

***

Promise me, that’s all, he demands, the words raspy and pain-stricken when he works up the nerve to speak to Fortinbras. A few days pass. They finish planning. You must promise me this, he says, the battle is soon, _listen_ … he doesn’t expect him to understand, but he makes him swear it anyways as they stand in the kitchen.

Hamlet is beside him all the while.

“Yes,” he agrees, taken aback at Horatio’s aggressively distraught state, as though seeing him for the first time. “I swear it on Denmark.”

“No. Swear it on Hamlet.”

“I swear it on The Noble Prince himself.”

Good, He thinks, seeing the respect in his eyes, the trust. “And … thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

When they leave, Fortinbras wonders what it means to find someone at university like that. He supposed such a thing couldn’t really happen outside of sleep. Someone to last your whole life and you his. A friend.

 

***

In the dark they lay together.

“Are you scared?” Hamlet asks.

His breath falls near, quiet and heavenly.

Horatio can’t see him, but that’s fine. He feels his ankles and thighs, his chin jutting into his sternum as he nuzzles his skin.

“Only when you don’t speak,” he says, “only when I can’t find you.”

 

***

The nimble boy, not even twenty-two, falls as a flower petal hitting the grass, the turn of a book page in a long ached for library.

He’s dressed in the armor of a dead prince. A decoy. A lie. A savage, saving grace.

Fortinbras forfeited, he had cried, and they believed him. He is the Trojan at the door of the Greeks. He is acting the part he was born to play. Stepping into the soles of the shoes he yearns for, he is another. He is his lover reborn.

Blood spills from his body, bright and triumphant as sunlight.

Hamlet, he thinks, as his chest shudders to a halt, we did it.

We’ve won.

***

Hamlet doesn’t expect to feel it. They had agreed to this. They knew. They both knew. Still, he finds himself howling, wishing he could beg Fortinbras to bring him the body.

He doesn’t have to.

Later that night he comes in, silently laying down what’s left of the other in a cloth.

The door closes again. Another hinge in their coffin.

Hamlet weeps until he almost remembers what it means to have a pulse. And what it means to wish he didn’t.

 

***

Fortinbras finds it strange, the tears burning in the back of his throat.

I thought they’d both be around at least a little longer, he thinks, opening the tin in his hands.

The fine sand passes into a larger urn. It goes down into the hollow, white mouth, and is swallowed by darkness.

He doesn’t shake the vase. The grains don’t need to mix. For they were indistinguishable to begin with.

***

Horatio remembers only this:

In Wittenberg, when the sun was hot as a forge, spilling out as splendid ichor.

The boy beside him, peaceful and sprawled out on the rooftop, light making his shadow loom so large it seemed he was the one controlling its rays.

“It’s your own fault,” he recited from memory, yawning lazily, a trail of marks the deep hue of pansies peeking out of his shirt collar. “I never wanted to do you any harm, but you insisted that I tame you.”

“Yes, of course.”

"Then you get nothing out of it?"

"I get something,"

“What?” He propped himself up on his elbow, smirking, all tempest and wishbones. Beautiful.

“You, Horatio replied, kissing him feverishly. His own voice echoed back, rough with want. “You alone will have the stars as no one else has them ...”

Yes, they were happiest then.

 

***

 _Hamlet._ The word feels runny in Horatio’s mouth. Thick. Slurred. Too slow. Shadows gather around him.

Dear me, he thinks, we’re not exactly ancient Greeks. What if this is purgatory, what if--

But then, he sees the door. He scrambles up, surprised when he doesn’t feel pain, the spear in his side no longer there. He doesn’t think to knock, opens it automatically, and steps through. The wood is familiar. The handle embossed with initials he once traced each day, as though he had never left.

The boy across from him basks in the endless angle of Dante’s sun, a beam cast to slow time and walk in sine die.  

“Have you read this one,” he asks, his voice warm and sure; _alive._ He runs towards Horatio, wrapping around him without a moment's hesitancy.

Horatio realizes he must be dead now, for he cannot breathe, cannot feel anything but Hamlet, flesh and blood and fiercely kissing him.

The tall windows are thrown open, a light breeze inviting them to climb to the roof later and watch the sunset, aubergine and husky pink and marigold. The kind you could never get tired of. The kind you could sit under and feel invincible in, impossibly small and voluntarily wonderstruck.

Reckless. Unbounded. Drenched. He looks out and knows what it means to be complete.

The same way he feels when …

“ _Mhm_ ,” he says rather ineloquently as they break apart. He doesn’t let go of him, doesn’t have to. Here, somehow, it’s as though they’re always touching.

Woven, Horatio thinks as bright, painful longing cracks through him. He runs his fingers over his body. Solid. Real. Bustling as a fire.

He studies the shelves around them. On every side there’s endless corridors of books, their leather bindings waiting to be poured over.

“We’ve some reading to catch up on,” Hamlet says, pressing close to him.

Oh, to never leave your side. This is all I wanted. This is all there is. A two-way dream. A lover in the shape of a ghost, a boy tongue-tied with grief, then coming undone by desire.

You, Hamlet. You.

“It might take Forever,” he counters, meaning to sound coy, but the words curl sweet and thick in his throat. They would not want for anything. They would always have each other.

Hamlet smiles, trembling. I know, he says without speaking at all, shaking his head, wiping the tears off their cheeks. I know, this too, is an ache. One I thought I’d never know.

Horatio imagines he is a mirror image; all bliss and lips turned upwards, allowing relief to swell through him at long last.

The sun unfurls around them. Bathes them in halos of incandescent light. They can feel its graze on their cheeks, gentle and unwavering.

“Well then,” Hamlet says, kissing him once more. “I think we’ve all the time needed for that.”

 

***

On the rooftop of Wittenberg two shadows are cast out in reams of irradiant, never-ending light, invariably coiled at their start as one.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading. Comments/kudos always appreciated. @victorian-twink


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